Main menu

Monthly Archives: January 2011

Post navigation

Everybody said there were no Mexican housing price indices, but Fulano found one. The Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal (SHF) [Federal Mortgage Society in English]) produces an index of Mexican housing prices by states and even certain cities. Their index uses January 2008 as the base of 100. Unlike the housing indices published on US home prices, the Mexican prices are not adjusted for inflation. The index only goes back to 2005.

Click on chart to enlarge

Since this chart is not inflation-adjusted, it is helpful to know what the Mexican inflation rate has been over the same period:

Click on chart to enlarge

The SHF is a federal agency that acts much like FannieMae and FreddieMac does in the US. It is not a direct lender to home buyers, but creates a secondary market for mortgage originators to sell their loans and provide liquidity in the Mexican home mortgage market. The home values they are picking up does not include the Gringo resort properties, as they are not a lender on these. If you want to understand what the average Mexican home is valued at, here is a chart that Fulano extracted from the SHF brochure:

The average home price in Baja California Sur is 430,468 pesos, or about $35,000, and that includes the land. That means all those high-priced Gringo-owned properties in Baja can only be sold to another Gringo. The Mexicans would not pay anywhere near those prices. It is known as the “greater fool” theory of home ownership.

The accents marks on words in Spanish are used for two main reasons. One is to differentiate between homophones, words that are spelled and pronounced the same, but with different meanings. For instance Sí, with an accent on the í means “yes,” while Si without the accent means “if.” Él with an accent on the é means “he”, while el with no accent means “the.” The other reason is to tell you how to pronounce the word.

Fulano used to paint a lot, then he started getting cataracts in both his eyes and had to stop. Couldn’t see colors very well and then lost all the details. Well, I had double eye surgery and got my vision back. In fact, my driver’s license doesn’t even require that I wear glasses while driving. The first time in 35 years! Woohoo! Here are a few of the hundred’s of paintings by Fulano, most of them created before the cataracts formed.

IMPERIAL BEACH — A man believed to have just crossed over the border from Mexico was arrested Monday night after deputies said he tried to assault a woman while trying to carjack her.

The victim had just parked her car on Seacoast Drive south of Imperial Beach Boulevard about 11 p.m. when she was approached by a man who was wet and muddy and holding a stick in his hand, sheriff’s Lt. Scott Ybarrondo said.

He told the woman he wanted a ride and when she refused to cooperate he tried to take her keys.

A struggle ensued and the man hit the woman with the stick, Ybarrondo said.

She screamed for help and while several people called 911 another person confronted the man and then followed him when he ran away.

Deputies arrived minutes later and took him into custody.

He was identified as 28-year-old Jesus Rodriguez-Viveros, Ybarrondo said.

Rodriguez-Viveros was booked into county jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted carjacking.

He is being held without bail on an immigration hold, the lieutenant said.

[Fulano’s note: BajaNomad uber liberal Diana Trotter, who is opposed to the border fence, Arizona SB1070, and anything else to prevent illegal aliens from entering the US, lives only blocks from where this incident occurred. Of course, she was not the woman who was beaten with a stick by an illegal alien, so she is still a liberal.]

The Baja California Attorney General, reported the finding of a headless torso of a man at 8:22AM today on a neighborhood road in the area of Baja Malibu. The road leads to the Urbi Quinta del Cedro subdivision, which is on the inland side of the scenic highway from Baja Malibu.

A knife and machete were found near the body, which has not been identified.

There’s a lesson here. The Egyptian government cut off the Internet and mobile-phone services in Cairo on Friday, called the army into the streets and imposed a nationwide night-time curfew. The extreme measures were ignored by tens of thousands of poor and middle-class protesters who united in rage against a regime seen as corrupt, abusive and neglectful of the nearly half of Egypt’s 80 million people who live below the poverty line of $2 a day.

Flames rose in cities across Egypt as police cars burned and protesters set the ruling party headquarters in Cairo ablaze. Others around the city looted banks, smashed cars, tore down street signs and pelted armored riot police vehicles with paving stones torn from roadways.

So far, the United States has been backing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He has been an ally of the US in the war on terror, and has tried to smooth out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because of this, the US has looked the other way at the human rights abuses and the fact that Egypt is not a democracy. Mubarak has been president for 30-years, ever since Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981. He is the only person who has been on the ballot in all those years.

Riots are also occurring in other mid-Eastern countries, such as Yeman and Jordan. They are fueled by the sudden ouster of the government of Tunisia. The whole area is rapidly destabilizing.

And the lesson? Countries with a large poor class and a small, corrupt upper class are inherently unstable. They are only held together by force, and they all eventually fail.

Profeco, the Mexican consumer affairs have had a couple of meetings in San Felipe over the last month and below is a report of the last meetings. We are posting this report in hopes of getting people to start an online open discussion to increase community awareness.

Profeco was 25 minutes late and Bill Casey used that time to tell the 45 people in attendance that all Mexicali government officials (Mayor and on down) are the source of all their problems. He stated that the high officials are great friends with the developers that are in most trouble and a phone call from the developer causes actions and investigations to be delayed by months to years. Casey was particularly hating on Dept. of Urbanization. Casey did mention that there had been two investigations in San Felipe so far, the Marina and Playa de Oro (PDO). He said that they found that Marina was in violation but as for PDO Casey put his hands over his head and stated something like “I can’t believe this”.

Profeco arrived and they started the meeting. Their manager brought an assistant to translate for him. It was explained that Sara (the previous Profeco contact) had been replaced by her manager. There was a lot of discontent about that replacement. It was expressed that Sara doing great job and moving the agenda along and made Profeco look good. Some believe she may have been getting too close and someone made a call, which had her replaced.

Manager started explaining the process that they would use to work with the developers. They would meet with the developer and work out a plan to get the situation fixed. He did state that they have limited resources and that they also cover Mexicali where there are huge problems.

He never got the chance to finish his explanation. Many people were interrupting him with specific questions about their situations. The manager was stunned and started talking about process and thus talking in circles.

A fairly reasonable man was representing about 10 Marina people who have not had power or water for 5 years. He wanted to know the status on the complaint that he had filed. Manager stated that Marina and Hacienda were the top 2 troubled developments that they were going to work on first. (Magdalines and Casa Blanca had been determined to be highest priority last time Sara was here.) Manager stated that they were meeting with Marina owner next week in Mexicali. After tons of pressure and heated questions and demands from the audience he said that they would probably give Marina till the end of the year to provide the promised amenities. If the fixes don’t happen there would be a fine/bond that would need to be posted that the developer would get back when the work was done. Audience was demanding weekly progress reports. At one point the Manger screwed up and seemed to indicate that the Marina Developer said that he would fix his water/power issues but demanded that Profeco investigate and get work out plans with all the other troubled developments first. The crowd went wild. Manager jumped on a bike to back pedal.

Part of a February, 2009 audit report by state auditor of Baja California pointing out that Grupo Munoz Lira,developer of Las Magdalenas, owes the state 18,833,304 pesos on land purchased and has failed to completethe construction agreement on 87 homes in Mexicali.

Manager said that he would send out information to Bill Casey, but the audience wanted the information to be sent out to the representatives of each development that were being worked with.

Several people tried to shout down Casey because he was not letting Profeco present their program and was being disrespectful. Casey turned his attention on them and they walked out.

There were several calls from the audience for people to call newspapers up north, and a couple of newspapers were stated to be running investigations. An owner from Las Magdalenas was one of those calling for this. It was stated that it might hurt sales/tourism but others stated there was no sales/tourism anyway so who cares? No thought as to all the local Mexican businesses that would be hurt by an additional barrage of bad news up north.

They went back to the replacement of Sara and basically accused Profeco of replacing her because she was starting to get things moving and getting things resolved. It was stated that she understood their problems and that they had come to trust her.

Manager said that they would be having future meetings regarding individual developments so that there weren’t so many issues and that they could focus on them.

The question was asked if Profeco handled cases of both home sales and lot only sales. The Manager answered both. A couple wanted to get that answer clarified. Seems to me they would be involved with both. Basically anything in the consumer area.

Manager responded to additional accusations that friendships and phone calls to high officials caused investigations to be cancelled by stating that he had developer friends in Mexicali that he had fined in order for them to finish their amenities. Both the Manager and his assistant were very poorly equipped language wise to hand this group. They were so busy translating in their heads that they had no time to respond before they were hit from another direction. It will be fascinating to see how the Mexican Manager’s personality will react to this humiliation at the hands of a bunch of Gringos.

Meeting broke up after this and a few gathered around the officials and started verbally beating on them.

There were a couple of rational voices in the crowd, and there were a lot of rightfully pissed off people that had paid for a home or a lot with promised power/water/title and had nothing after several years of lawyers talking with their developer. The lady representing Hacienda stated that Profeco had told them in a meeting last week that they would use Profeco money to sue the developer if it doesn’t get fixed. The mood seemed to be that they had suffered so much for so long that they do not care anymore who else gets hurt while they get fixed even if it is the local Mexicans from a further drop in tourism.

There are people out there with no power/water/title, homes with unsafe/unsanitary living conditions for their children in some cases (Mexicali). However, there were others in the audience that have power/water/title and they want Profeco to take their limited resources of time and manpower and spend them on their issues.

A B.C. politician and her husband have become the latest in a high-profile string of Canadians to run into trouble in Mexico.

Coquitlam-Maillardville MLA Diane Thorne and her spouse, Neil Edmondson, visited Mexico earlier this month for a vacation, as they had a dozen times before.

Ms. Thorne said that on Jan. 10, the couple were driving with two friends in the port city of Progreso when two motorcycles struck their rented car.

Mr. Edmondson, who was driving, was arrested and jailed.

“My husband said it was the worst thing that ever happened to him in his life,” Ms. Thorne said in an interview on Friday.

At first, Ms. Thorne said there was no reason to believe the accident was anything sinister. The motorcycles had tried to pass while the vehicle was turning left and slammed into the side of the car.

One of the drivers and his passenger quickly left the scene. The driver of the other motorcycle and his passenger appeared to be okay, Ms. Thorne said.

Police and ambulance arrived within minutes. A woman who saw the collision came out of her home to say Mr. Edmondson wasn’t to blame.

“‘It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault; kids always do that, they go up on the wrong side to pass,’” Ms. Thorne recalled the witness saying.

Ms. Thorne’s party were having difficulty communicating with police at the scene, and a stranger offered to translate. The man went to the police station with Mr. Edmondson. Ms. Thorne was told she couldn’t come along, but wasn’t given a reason.

Ms. Thorne and her friends returned to their hotel and waited for a few hours. When they didn’t hear anything, they had the hotel owner contact police.

“He was pretty shaken up,” Ms. Thorne said of Mr. Edmondson. He was sitting in a small interrogation room and, on his way into the station, had seen a man in handcuffs on the floor with a gun pointed at him, she said.

Mr. Edmondson – who has severe asthma and has had several strokes – was escorted to the bathroom by armed policemen once during the incident, and was not offered any food or water.

Police told Ms. Thorne and her husband it would be three days before he could appear before a judge. Or, she said, they could pay a fine and leave that day. The $1,500 apparently covered injuries to the motorcycle driver, money the translator claimed he had already paid to police, and an impound fee.

Ms. Thorne said it appears she and her husband may have been fleeced. [Fulano’s Note: Fleeced? Really? You think?]

The Texas Department of Public Safety has warned Texans to avoid traveling in Mexico. The warning, issued Friday, is the fourth in the last year. It cites the death of a missionary this week, the shooting of an American on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake in September, the killing of a University of Texas-Brownsville student in October and the suspected abduction of four men and a 14-year-old who were visiting Nuevo Laredo in late November.

Fulano scanned the Mexican newspapers for what has happened in Mazatlan over the past 24 hours.

The state Secretary of Tourism, Oralia Rice Rodriquez, reported that on January 31 they would reveal their Plan for Tourist Security to the high executives of the Association of Florida and Carribean Cruises, with the goal that the tourist cruise ships which have withdrawn from Mazatlan return. [Isn’t that great? They have a PLAN. Fulano is wondering where their security plan is for Mexicans?]

A 75-year old woman was murdered with a firearm when two subjects assaulted her as she was getting into a car in a Mazatlan neighborhood.

Venemous sea snakes appeared on the beaches of Mazatlan yesterday afternoon. The incident occured in front of the Fiesta Inn hotel, and beachgoers were alerted to not go into the water. Marine biologists said the snakes were highly venemous.

Motorcyclist dies after being shot in attempt to steal his motorcycle.